


What isn't There

by inkyrobotsparks



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Canon-Typical suicidal ideation, Ghost!Connor, Grief, Haunting, M/M, Romance, Soul Bond, TECHNICLLY major character death, but friendly haunting, but only because Connor is already technically dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkyrobotsparks/pseuds/inkyrobotsparks
Summary: He glanced up into the mirror. It was a little foggy, the humidity in the bathroom washing out color and shape. But not enough to fully obscure the shadow standing next to him.Maybe it said something about him, that he wasn’t particularly shocked to see it. Because he should’ve been, his heart should’ve jumped to his throat, or something, anyway. But he just stared at the still figure trembling like a leaf-tossed wind only a few inches away from him, trying to make sense of it.Then it looked up to meet his eyes in the mirror.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 78





	What isn't There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gildedfrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gildedfrost/gifts).



It took Hank almost a year to realize there was someone living with him.

He couldn’t be blamed for it, really. The move happened right around the time he hit rock bottom, where he couldn’t bear to live in a house that felt full of ghosts anymore. Or rather, one particular one. Around every corner were little reminders of Cole, memory after memory stacked into the smallest spaces. His fingertips gripping the kitchen counter when he was trying to sneak the sugary breakfast cereal, the closet he always ducked into when they played hide-and-seek, now full of toys and clothes and books that Hank  _ needed _ out of the way. It wasn’t enough, of course. None of it was, not when every day he woke up staring at a familiar ceiling, familiar walls, but his son’s room empty, silent, forever.

He tried to drown that silence in booze, and when that didn’t work, he drove down to Chicago to hand the keys to Jen, to do with as she would. And then he packed up his shit, put Sumo in the back seat, and moved into the first house in Detroit that he saw listed. He didn’t ask questions. There could’ve been rats in the kitchen for all he cared, roaches in the ceiling lights - none of it mattered.

And there he stayed. Fresh on the heels of his grief he lived among unopened boxes, coming home as late as possible, dropping face-down into the bed - in a little house that turned out not to be infested after all, just small and dim and quiet, and maybe a little grim - although that could’ve been Hank’s own mood, reflected back at him from the plain white walls.

He spent little time there, at first, opting instead to bounce between work and an array of various bars in town.

The only reason he ever unpacked the boxes at all was because Jeff came by one evening, about two months after he’d moved, took one look around and rolled up his sleeves to get straight to work. And Hank felt too guilty to let him silently do that work himself, so he got off his ass, got a box cutter, and they’d passed the evening - and then the night - making the space livable again. Stocking the kitchen cabinets, the shelves with the books and records Jen had shipped to him when she realized he’d left almost everything he owned behind. Putting up pictures.

It helped, a little. To come home to something that posed as a home and not just a storage locker. To give Sumo a space to be, unencumbered by a maze of boxes to leap over. To have music to put on again. It wasn’t enough to keep him from reaching for the bottle, or for his gun, but it was better than before.

Better enough that he started to notice some odd things, here and there. Like the fact that sometimes, the floorboards in the hall seemed to creak oddly at night, soft and rhythmic. Or that the wiring seemed faulty, because the lights flickered regularly when he watched TV. Nothing inexplicable that gave him any pause, except maybe when he was  _ sure _ he’d left something in one place and then found them in entirely another, often on the floor.

The strangest incident happened the night he came home stumbling drunk, exhausted, sore and numb all at once, having hit an exceptionally low point for what felt like the millionth time. He sat at the kitchen table, staring too-long at Cole’s face in the picture, spiraling deeper into a familiar despair, a certainty that nothing would ever be okay again so why bother.

And then the bathroom faucet opened. Loudly. Enough to make him look up, and then enough to drag him out of his seat to go check on the pipes for fear of them being broken.

They weren’t broken. The water was just  _ on _ , rapidly filling the sink and the tub with a nearly furious gurgle, steam curling. Hank slowly twisted them both shut, brow furrowed, watching the rest of it drain in a pathetic swirl and a faint bubbling noise.

And then there was just silence, deafening, interrupted by a persistent dripping sound he couldn’t source.

Maybe it was all in his head. It was swimming, after all, and so was the rest of the bathroom. Still, he looked to the window, pressed against the frame, tested the latch. Closed tight, still locked, all but fused shut by dust.

The back of his neck prickled oddly. But he wiped down the fog on the mirror with his sleeve, avoiding his own bleary eyes in the watery reflection, and made the decision to lie down and try to get some sleep.

And that was just the start of things.

They didn’t escalate quickly, exactly, but he started noticing these little oddities more often. Cabinets that were mysteriously open when he came home, music or books he’d find on the carpet despite not having touched them in months. And then, at night, Sumo would wake him by sitting up on the bed and staring off into some corner of the room, hackles raised, a slow, curious sound building in his chest, almost an inquisitive growl.

A series of coincidences and oddities, unconnected, unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But it still made Hank feel some kind of way, especially when alone, late at night inside his empty, creaking house. He thought maybe the feeling was a deepened sort of loneliness, but that wasn’t entirely it either, didn’t seem to encompass the exact sense of being equally  _ not _ alone. And it was something he just couldn’t explain.

So he didn’t try to, because what did it matter, anyway? It was just some junk to pick up off the floor once in a while, mysteriously leaky faucets to fix. The worst incident flooded his bathroom floor, but it was all tile and no basement anyway, so he mopped up the mess and went about his day. He stopped jumping when doors abruptly slammed shut, blaming it on a draft of wind.

He began to suspect someone was messing with him when, one night, he came home and ended up with his ass on the floor, having slipped on - a fork? One of many. It looked as if someone had taken every piece of silverware in his house out of the drawers and then laid it out on the tile in even rows.

The back of his neck prickled uneasily. He checked the door. The windows. All still locked from the inside, no signs of forced entry to be found.

The silverware drawers were closed.

He cleaned it all up, in the end. But with a new awareness, a suspicion dancing at the edge of his consciousness, one he couldn’t name. One he pushed away anyway, because superstition wasn’t his thing. He’s never encountered anything in his life that couldn’t be explained.

Until now that is. Until the nebulous feeling of  _ something _ being off, like a step being missed on a stair, morphed into a strange new certainty instead.

He slept restlessly that night, convinced there was someone in the house with him for the first time since he moved here, waking with a start at every noise. But oddly enough, it wasn’t fear that kept him up. Just something he couldn’t explain, akin to anticipation.

He didn’t see anyone, not that night or the one after that.

He didn’t even see anyone a few nights later, when a gust of wind so strong it shattered his window blew the gun he was holding right out of his hand and sent it skittering across the floor. But that’s when he became  _ sure _ . Wind didn’t do that. Wind didn’t go from zero to almost throwing him across the room in the middle of another depressive spiral to interrupt a game of Russian roulette only to disappear entirely a second later.

He took a long, cold drink of water after that, staring at the swimming shards of glass, then headed off for the bathroom to wash his face and cool off his itching skin. His hands were still shaking, his own breath too loud in the dim, echoing room.

He didn’t see Connor then. But if he’d looked up rather than down as he left the bathroom, hanging on to the doorjamb for dear life, he could’ve glimpsed a pair of sad, brown eyes staring at his bleary face from the mirror.

The strange specter sharing his space didn’t appear to him until just after the third anniversary of Cole’s death. Almost a year after his move.

He’d been trying to ride one of those waves of melancholy and keep his head above water, with mixed levels of success. He felt on the edge of something, failure maybe, gripping his own sanity with just his fingertips and waiting for it to slip out of his tenuous grasp with every day, sometimes every hour that passed.

There was nothing particularly unusual about that day, though. He shuffled inside, coat dripping with rainwater, and bent down to rub Sumo’s ears and fill his water bowl. He shed his wet clothes with a quiet groan, too tired to even ponder going to a bar to do his drinking. Hell, maybe too tired to drink, too.

He could hear the faucet in the bathroom leaking. Not exactly news, and not violent enough to warrant immediate intervention, so he dried off first. Put on an old vinyl of Aretha Franklin, padded to the bedroom to pull his damp t-shirt over his head. He was about to reach for a dry one when his alarm clock seemed to  _ leap _ off the nightstand, hitting the floor with a resounding  _ thunk _ .

He froze, put down the dry shirt to pick it up. It felt - normal. A little cool to the touch. He ran his hand down the wooden plane of the nightstand, even and unmarred, no wobble to be found. He set the alarm back down. The power must’ve reset, because it was blinking out a midnight hour.

Hank rubbed the back of his neck, turned back to the bed, put on the dry shirt. As he left the bedroom, he could’ve sworn he heard a quiet, frustrated sigh coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

He ignored it, despite the strange prickle he felt at the base of his spine, and headed back for the bathroom to fix the faucet.

Only, the faucet wasn’t leaking anymore. Just dripping sadly, leaving slightly discolored bubbles around the drain. He leaned against the rim of the sink, watching them pool, feeling that odd draft tickling the ends of his hair.

“ Now you’re just messing with me,” he grumbled at the offending pipe.

Something hit his cheek. Like the flutter of a moth’s wingbeat, but it still made him jerk. In the space of a moment, his throat went entirely dry, and he froze in place, trying to find the source of that feeling. His own hair, surely. He blinked, taking a steadying breath, tucked the strands hanging over his face behind his ear.

He also glanced up into the mirror. It was a little foggy, the humidity in the bathroom washing out color and shape. But not enough to fully obscure the shadow standing next to him.

Maybe it said something about him, that he wasn’t particularly  _ shocked  _ to see it. Because he should’ve been, his heart should’ve jumped to his throat, or  _ something _ , anyway. But he just stared at the still figure trembling like a leaf-tossed wind only a few inches away from him, trying to make sense of it.

Then it looked up to meet his eyes in the mirror.

And - Hank couldn’t explain that either. Because instead of a primal terror, there was - a strange moment, like time had slowed down, where the only thing that existed was that pair of dark, dark eyes, sharper than any part of either of their reflections, framed by a slightly blurry but undoubtedly pretty, pale face. He didn’t need to turn to know it wouldn’t be there if he looked around, but he didn’t quite want the mirage to dispel either, so he just stood, unmoving, rooted in place, staring at the apparition. It seemed like the longer he stared, the clearer it became. It sharpened as the fog on the mirror faded, until Hank could make out every one of the freckles scattered over his face, the dark fringe of his lashes. And could no longer deny that what he was seeing was more than a shadow darting in the corner of his vision.

He released a slow breath, one he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. And the stranger in the mirror looked at him and -  _ smiled _ , with a light tip of one corner of his mouth. Small and fleeting, but without a doubt amused.

And then Hank blinked. And the stranger was gone.

It felt like all the air had been rapidly sucked out of the room. Hank straightened up, heart beating against his ribs, and unclenched the death-grip he had on the cold edge of the sink.

He was losing it, obviously, and maybe even finally. That felt like the thing to feel, at any rate, only - only it wasn’t. Not even close.

He ran his fingers through his hair, took a deep breath, picked up a hand towel to wipe down the mirror. His reflection looked clear enough. But if he thought about it hard enough, he could almost imagine his ghostly companion hovering by his shoulder. Could almost feel that flutter of movement against his cheek again.

When he curled up in bed that night, that touch was all he could think about, his skin still tingling. A number of things were falling into place - the odd squeaks and creaks of his house, the slamming doors, the silverware? The presence he could feel sometimes, not so much taking up space as… making everything not as empty.

He fell asleep to Sumo’s soft snoring at the foot of the bed, the slow ticking of the clock, and a smell like lilacs swirling in his nose.

He didn’t remember his dreams that night, and he didn’t see his ghost again the next day, either. But curiosity was a good distraction, and so for the first time, he decided to look into the history of the property, starting with a simple search.

To his surprise, he didn’t find nearly as much as he’d anticipated. The house had changed hands a few times throughout its history, once very abruptly, but aside from the deeds and a couple of archived advertisements, there was nothing of note. No newspaper clippings, no spooky sightings, not even a bad review given to the realtors in charge. Just a house. A normal little house, one bedroom, one yard.

He pulled his laptop into his lap, and was about to dig deeper into the public records on the city hall website, when his lights blinked. Off, on, off again.

Sumo raised his head and sniffed at the air.

Watching the room, Hank raised a mug of tea to his lips. Still hot, herbal. But his attention was on the swaying curtains, the faint groan of the rain just outside.

All was quiet, so he turned back to the screen, began to search through the list of previous owners, starting with the one that seemingly only stayed for several months.

The faucet in his bathroom began to drip again. He looked up at the flickering lights and felt an involuntary smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

“ Can’t blame me for being curious,” he muttered into the quiet.

The drips of water in the bathroom sped up. Hank scrolled through, ended up searching one of the names that stood out to him for reasons he didn’t really understand. Maybe it sounded distantly familiar.

The lights blinked again, and then switched off. Hank perked up, listened to the breeze outside as every appliance in his house slowly whirred to silence. But his laptop was just fine, the battery a little over half-full, even if the screen  _ was  _ flickering slightly.

The owner’s name didn’t ring the bell in his head properly until an archived news article popped up. Along with a picture taken a good few decades ago.

He read the headline. Then the date. Exhaled slowly. The room smelled like cloves and lilac. “Oh.”

The faucet stopped dripping. He scrolled through the article, rubbing his jaw periodically. Thunder rumbled quietly just outside.

“ Connor. That’s gotta be you, right? Connor Stern?”

A breeze stirred his hair. Sumo was watching him intently, so Hank went very, very still.

His laptop glitched out. And then the speakers crackled softly, low and distorted. Hank thought he could almost hear a quiet voice behind the static saying “Yes.”

He sucked in a breath. Dragged a shaking hand through his hair. “You’ve been here this whole time?”

The speaker popped softly. The voice on the other end was a little louder, clearer. ”Yes. But I don’t blame you for not noticing.”

Hank stared at the tiny speaker grill. Tapped his fingers on the keyboard absently.

The voice — Connor — made a strange noise. Hank froze in place, startled. “Uh— you okay there?”

There was a long silence that stretched over the fading sounds of the weather outside, and it almost felt warm. “I’m fine,” he answered finally. His voice was gravelly again, hiding under white noise. “I wish I could stay.”

And before Hank could answer, the speaker popped one last time.

The lights flickered on. The fridge whirred to life.

Sumo stuck his nose into the laptop fan grate and sniffed.

Hank wasn’t sure Connor could hear him, now that he was… fuck. Elsewhere. Hank didn’t know. He didn’t know the first thing about ghosts. Didn’t even fully  _ believe _ in them, not before this exact moment, and sometime his head was sure to catch up to all this odd acceptance, but for now—

“ Come around sometime, if you can,” he said, closing the laptop, unable to keep looking at Connor’s smiling face staring at him from a blurry, black-and-white picture.

His only answer was a soft, whistling breeze that made the branches of a tree tap on the walls and windows of his house.

He fell asleep on the couch. He expected this to be the end of things. A fluke of some kind. A momentary break from reality.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, either. About the gentle, brown eyes from the picture. Or - his story.

He pushed it from his mind, over and over again, but it hurt how familiar it was. He wondered if Connor could’ve lived a longer life, if someone had been there for him. A happier life.

He looked for Connor in the reflections around his house later. Never finding him, but always feeling a prickle at the back of his neck. A constant reminder.

He found himself talking out loud more. Expected to feel awkward about it, but it was shockingly natural to come home, lie down on the couch to rest, and then talk about his day to the ceiling in the quiet. It was pathetic, maybe, but it made him feel less lonely, even though he seldom got an answer that was more than a crackle of static over some speaker in his room.

Even with that though, he knew. He knew it was a response, Connor reaching out. Knew somewhere deep in his gut that he was there, listening, maybe even trying to talk back, so he made an effort even when it felt silly, even when he started to half-think that he imagined the whole thing.

“ I think I should quit my job,” he mumbled on a particularly chilly evening, into the pillow he’d squished in half and tucked under his face. Frost was creeping over his windows, and it looked like white flowers blooming against the darkness of the sky.

The curtains stirred. Nina Simone sang quietly over the speakers. For a second, there was a static crackle.

“ Why do you want to quit your job?” Connor asked quietly, from somewhere underneath the gentle notes of the piano.

“ Heart’s not in it anymore,” Hank said, eyes drifting shut. “Nothing ever changes.” He meant it in a broader sense, not just personal — but Connor hummed in response, a quiet sound of assent.

“ No, it really doesn’t.”

“ You must get bored. Stuck in this house and all.”

“ I’m not really stuck just…” He trailed off, and for a moment Hank thought he was gone again. “You’re interesting, so it’s not so bad.”

Hank’s left eyebrow crawled up. “I’m interesting.”

“ Yes.”

“ You clearly don’t get out much.”

Connor snorted quietly. Hank liked the stifled sound of his laugh. It crackled a little, made the speakers pop, in a warm and scratchy sort of way. “I don’t, but you’re interesting anyway. It’s been a while since I’ve had company.”

Hank ran his hand though his hair. “I bet. What do you even do all day long?”

“ These days? Mostly try to get your attention.”

“ The silverware?”

“ Oh. No. I was just bored.”

“ Took me an hour to clean up all the forks.”

“ Sorry.”

But Connor didn’t sound sorry. He sounded amused, and extraordinarily pleased with himself.

Hank snorted. “Funny, you sound more entertained than sorry.”

“ My threshold for entertainment is low. Watching you pick up spoons for two hours was the most fun I’ve had in years.”

“ Hilarious.” He rolled his eyes, but somehow found himself smiling anyway. Even after Connor’s voice faded away again, into the warm crackle of vinyl.

He came and went that way for a while, never staying long, but with every time, Hank found himself looking forward to their next meeting more and more. Connor was clever, and quiet, and — as it turned out, more than a bit of a flirt. Maybe out of boredom, or loneliness, but it made something in Hank’s chest warm all the same.

The house didn’t feel as quiet anymore, either. And although nothing fundamentally changed, Hank felt better, knowing that someone was there. Even on his worst nights, on the nights everything felt so heavy he could barely move — there was a glimmer at the edge of his consciousness, something bright that hadn’t been there before. It would be overzealous to call it hope, perhaps, but… it felt really dang close.

“ Most people are afraid when they notice me,” Connor remarked quietly one evening. An evening that would shift  _ everything _ , even if neither of them knew. ”Why weren’t you?”

When Hank focused hard enough on the armchair by his bed, he could  _ swear _ he could almost see his soft outline. Like a shadow that was watching him.

He didn’t have a good answer. It was complicated at the very best, and there wasn’t any part of the answer that didn’t hurt.

He should’ve given Connor more credit though, because when Hank dragged his feet answering, he asked, “I know you lost someone. Is that why?”

The question he’d been nursing for a while bubbled to the surface. “Cole. Do you — have you —  _ seen _ him, or—?”

“ No,” Connor answered gently. “But — that’s good, Hank. You wouldn’t want him to be like me.”

Hank almost said that yes, he would. Because he’d do anything to hear his voice again, to talk to him, to ask him if he’s okay, if he’s happy wherever he is.

To ask his forgiveness. To hold him again, to…

Hank closed his eyes against the welling tears. “Okay,” he rasped, his voice shaking. “Alright. Thank you anyway.”

“ I can tell he still haunts you. It’s like a shadow, but—”

Hank blinked. “It doesn’t— hurt him, does it? My grief?”

Very briefly, he felt a touch against the back of his hand, like cool fingers resting on his skin. He shivered, holding still, trying to figure out if it was real, or just a product of his exhausted mind.

“ No,” Connor said, closer to his ear. “It only hurts you.”

Hank sighed. “Good. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise. If he couldn’t find peace because of me.”

Connor was silent for a long while. Hank thought he may have vanished again into the silence, as was his way, but after a drawn-out pause, he said, “Some days I thought your shadow was so dark it would drown you.”

“ Can that happen?”

“ Yes.” He went quiet again, but this time Hank could almost feel his presence, a silent sort of intensity. “The times I found you with your gun, I thought— I was scared for you.”

Oddly, this made Hank smile. “Is that why you tried to bring the house down around me?”

Connor scoffed. “I blew around some wind. Hardly bringing the house down.”

“ Did the job of distracting me though, didn’t it?”

“ I suppose,” Connor said uncertainly. “Some days your shadow is a little bit lighter, lately. I don’t know if that helps, and I don’t know if— if that translates to how you feel, or if it’s going to keep changing or not, but. I think it’s a good sign.”

“ Maybe,” Hank admitted. “It’s nice to… have company. You’re a good friend, you know?”

Connor laughed, sweet and melodic, in a way that seemed to slip somehow into Hank’s soul. “The quiet and invisible kind?”

That got a smile out of Hank, but only a brief one. “I’m being serious. I don’t know why you decided to show yourself, but I’m glad that you did.”

Connor hummed. If Hank concentrated enough, he could almost hear something like breathing, feel a faint breeze against his shoulder. “I showed myself because I thought you were beautiful.”

And Hank wanted laugh at that, except Connor sounded like he wasn’t kidding at all. It made something warm unfurl in his chest.

“ I wish I could see you,” Hank said. The words tumbled out of him before he could stop them, wistful and — unfair. Connor couldn’t help it, obviously. He didn’t need to feel guilty about being too  _ dead _ , on top of everything else.

But to his surprise, Connor didn’t scoff, or bristle. “I wish I could kiss you,” he said. Warmly, and boldly. It was more blatant than the way he usually flirted, and less playful, and that made Hank almost believe him.

He thought about Connor’s face in the newspaper. He’d died so young. Hank wondered if he ever got to really experience life the way he’d wanted. If he’d ever kissed another man, if he ever fell in love. If he was ever made to feel safe, and cherished.

“ You’re a menace,” Hank muttered, letting a smile sneak into his voice. “You know that, right?”

“ I mean it. You’re the first person to make me wish— for so much.”

Hank turned his face. Something flickered in the outer corner of his peripheral vision, a shadow but to quite. A ripple maybe, or a flutter. Connor sounded so genuine, and vulnerable, and real.

And it was so easy to just... go along with it. To believe him.

Hank wanted to believe him.

He reached out for the edge of that ripple. For a moment, he could swear he felt a slight resistance, like wind pushing back at his hand. Connor gasped softly.

Hank held very still. His whole arm tingled, suddenly and intensely. It was like an electrical shock that sent an ache though his joints all the way to his shoulder. It hurt, but...

“ Don’t let go,” Connor whispered urgently. His voice was clearer, brighter. “Don’t let go, Hank.”

“ I’ve got you,” Hank said, heart pounding a thousand times a minute. His mouth was dry, but if he concentrated and closed his eyes, he could  _ feel _ Connor’s touch, so close to being real contact he could hardly tell the difference. “I didn’t think you’d be so warm.”

Connor shivered. Hank closed his grip around what felt like his fingers. It didn’t feel possible, but — here they were. And Hank couldn’t describe it. Could barely wrap his head around it. But it felt like starlight in his hands, like touching something he was never meant to touch or even perceive. Something otherworldly and beautiful, a window into the universe itself. He could tell Connor was leaning into it too, that something about him was taking form, flickering wildly, but hotter than normal, like a flame. Hank wanted to take it and keep it in his heart.

The world distorted a little around the edges, an odd lens warp that made his eyes hurt. The lights in he house dimmed, the electronics went silent on a sad, dying whine. There was one bright point in it all - only one. And when he squinted at it, he could just make out his face, a pair of dark, fathomless eyes, the look in them so intense it took his breath away.

Connor reached out to touch his face. Hank felt the brush of fingertips against his cheek, probing at his skin with something close to curiosity, a tenderness. Hank sat so still he honestly wasn’t sure time was still flowing.

“ I think… I did something I shouldn’t have,” he admitted. His voice was clear, and low. There was still a honeyed, golden sort of quality to it, just as there was to his face and the still-unsteady outline of his form.

“ What happened?”

“ I’m… not sure. But — it doesn’t feel allowed.”

Hank interlaced their fingers. Connor looked down at their joined hands, his light fuzzing rapidly, then sharpening around his edges as if something had snapped into place. Hank could still feel a pulse everywhere they touched.

“ I don’t know if I can maintain it,” Connor said weakly. “But I want to. I want to stay.” His voice cracked on that last word.

Hank’s heart lurched. “Then stay.”

“ I— I’m a ghost, Hank. A shadow of myself. We can’t—” his voice shook, “I can’t ever come back. Not really. If we’d— if we’d known each other, in another life, then maybe—” he choked, and maybe Hank was empathizing a little too hard, but he could  _ feel  _ Connor’s heartbreak. His longing. It was as real as what Hank knew as his own.

Maybe that was it. Maybe the force of their mutual loneliness had dragged Connor closer to the physical world. Maybe it was Hank’s pain that did it, or Connor’s compassion, of some tangle of both. Maybe it was their souls reaching across towards each other over the boundaries of death itself. Hank didn’t know, He suspected Connor didn’t either, and furthermore, he wasn’t sure it really mattered.

He reached out to cup Connor’s jaw. He was half-sure he’d burst like a soap bubble, but Connor just leaned in, flickering still, even more like a heartbeat now.

“ You don’t have to be anything you’re not,” Hank rasped. “You can have  _ this _ , can’t you?”

For a long time, Connor didn’t answer. But his feelings filtered through Hank, cool and jumbled together, confusion and hope and something soft and shattered, longing so keen it veered only into pain.

Hank reached out. He didn’t know how exactly, but he sighed and leaned  _ into  _ Connor’s feelings as if they were his own, propping them up, holding them close and sending a wave of encouragement in his direction.

There was a static pop between them. It made Hank jerk reflexively, and he blinked into what looked like warm, golden light.

And then Connor’s presence was gone.

Hank closed his fingers around air. And bowed his head, because losing that bit of contact brought unexpected pain.

He was leaning forward on his couch and the house was silent, and he felt alone again. Unexpectedly, a tear rolled out of his eye and dripped down his nose, and he curled in on himself, trying to breathe, trying to just… parse this. Any of this.

Connor deserved more. More than he got, more than he had now. And it was just so  _ unfair _ , profoundly unfair that Hank had a life he didn’t care about anymore, while he was just— gone, intangible, lost to everything and everyone he cared about. And now he wasn’t even here anymore, and Hank couldn’t touch him, couldn’t tell him he… he what?

That he cared for him? That in his heart he was nursing the beginnings of something even more than that, something he was afraid to name? That he wanted to kiss Connor too, curl him into his side, make him feel less alone?

Hank closed his eyes. “Where do you go, when you’re not here?”

To his surprise, he wasn’t met by silence. Something at his fingers shuddered softly, rolled against him, vibrating with a quiet purr.

_ I’m always here _ .

Hank started. “Connor?”

There was a long, sort of dumbfounded silence.  _ I… you’ve never heard me before. Not like this. _

“ You’ve never been this loud before.”

Connor’s touch was different like this. Less physical, but more like… warmth, like presence. A presence that was growing a little stronger as Hank concentrated. He was aware that something was different, something had changed, something… he didn’t really understand. He just knew that Connor —

_ I’m here. I always am. It’s just… hard to focus on the living world most of the time. I can’t always  _ be _ in it the way I want to be. I drift somewhere in between. It’s… easier. When I focus on you. _

Hank slumped back against the couch cushions. Feeling relief, and curiosity, and a tenderness that wasn’t all his. He closed his eyes again, tired and wrung out. “Then focus on me. And stay,” he rasped, meaning it more than anything.

It was funny, but he was  _ sure _ , in that moment, that he could feel Connor’s hesitant smile.

Hank passed out on the couch that evening, still thinking about that little expression and the accompanying burst of warmth.

When he woke the next morning, he fully expected Connor to be gone, invisible to him again. But he wasn’t. Hank opened his eyes, and at the edge of his vision was that familiar, golden glow.

He was afraid to reach out for it. For him. Maybe he was still dreaming, or maybe whatever bound them last night would be gone. It was better, easier to lie there in the gray light of dawn, basking in the warmth of Connor’s presence.

_ Hank? _

Hank groaned softly. His back was sore as hell from the position he fell asleep in, and for a second, the fresh stab of that eclipsed everything else. And then Connor reached out for him, folding around him like a blanket, sending a wave of soothing through his cramped muscles.

A soft purr went through Hank’s bones. A gentle and curious little vibration that set every nerve in his body alight with something mysterious and bright.

_ Hank. I’m still here _ .

“ So you are.”

_ It gets easier. Coming back to you. _

Hank stretched, and calm settled over him. He didn’t know if it came from him or from Connor, and he wasn’t sure it really mattered. He felt… intertwined. Less than two people, but more than one. “Good. I’m glad.”

… _ You really like having me around? _

There was vulnerability in his voice. And curiosity, but mostly vulnerability. Hank’s heart twisted in his chest, because he couldn’t imagine a reality in which it was okay for him to doubt that.

“ Yeah, baby. Of course I do. You... you make everything better.”

Connor’s presence flickered.

He materialized suddenly, faded and shuddering but there, and real, and visible, with an expression of intense focus on his face.

He was sprawled on top of Hank, and if he had any weight to him at all, he would’ve been pinning him to the couch. As it was, Hank figured he could’ve sat up and gotten to his feet right through him, but... he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to move. He wanted to stay right here, and hold Connor forever.

He reached out to brush the back of his knuckles against Connor’s cheek. And felt it’s warmth, a soft vibration again that made it feel almost like perfectly regular skin. Even more so when he closed his eyes, imagined — felt — Connor leaning into the contact.

“ I want... to stay. I want to believe I can stay,” Connor whispered hoarsely. His voice was a ripple, a breath close to Hank’s face against his lips.

Hank clung to the feeling of contact between them. Connor was right, it was getting easier. He could feel Connor’s emotions running rampant between them, the sparks of his hope and his confusion, the cold lance of his fear. The warmth of his affection. “Then stay.”

And Connor must’ve read exactly what Hank meant from that statement, because his warmth expanded, like a bubble, like hands holding Hank’s face and combing through his hair, touching his mouth. Hank closed his eyes, leaning in, tasting what he could only describe as sunlight. And if his soul leaped a little at the contact, at a not-kiss that felt like so much like a kiss, it was only because Hank wanted to wrap around Connor so badly.

~

Loving a ghost wasn’t nearly as much trouble as Hank was afraid it might be.

In fact, in some ways, it felt… easier. Easier than loving the living again, and easier than loving no one.

Something was different about their connection. Something that felt permanent in the way it wound them together, weaved the fabric of them both. With every day that passed, Connor found it easier to stay with him. Easier to show himself, and easier to sometimes, in that peculiar way of his, to touch Hank.

Their minds moved together more often than not. It was easy to talk like this, to share emotion freely. Where he used to have to look for Connor’s presence, he had to now look for his absence. And he seldom found it, if ever. Connor’s soul had somehow latched onto his, and Hank’s to Connor’s. Two beings in what, at least according to Hank, felt like perfect symbiosis.

Hank thought it was a bit funny. Because it had taken him so long to figure out there was someone living in his house with him, and now, it as impossible not to notice.

Whatever had tied Connor to the house - his death, or the baggage that came with his life — seemed to dissolve as well. Hank was surprised to find that on a mellow summer day, when he decided to take Sumo on a well-deserved visit to the park, he took Connor with them.

They sat on a bench, staring out at the cool, rippling banks of the lake together. Connor’s eyes were bright, and there was a crooked, charming and familiar smile on his face.

He placed his hand over Hank’s and leaned into his shoulder, a presence that felt solid. It was still early, and the wind was cool and Hank… felt at peace. There was no need to move, or to say anything at all, or feel anything but the contentment that came with sitting arm-in-arm with Connor.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
